Lilac is a Sad Color
by Ryeloza
Summary: A series of nonlinear stories all regarding Prue.
1. Lilac is a Sad Color

**Disclaimer: **I do not own _Charmed_. C'est la vie.

**A/n: **My mind is wondering in random directions lately. I hope you enjoy this.

**Lilac is a Sad Color**

A story by **Ryeloza**

No one lived in the house on the corner of the street. Prue wasn't sure why. The lilac Victorian stood just as grand as the rest of the houses on Prescott Street, but no one had set up a home there since the Gherins moved out. That summer, Prue spent the twilight hours of most days on the front stoop of that house. The sad house, Phoebe called it. Usually, Prue laughed at the fanciful imaginings that Phoebe garbled, but sometimes as the night settled in and she looked up at the house through a haze of cigarette smoke she could see what her younger sister meant. The chipped paint, the sagging shutters; the whole house seemed to sigh in loneliness. _I need a friend_.

Grams didn't know that Prue smoked. The habit was new and her hand still shook whenever she brought the cigarette to her mouth. Somehow, though, each puff inserted independence in a way Prue had been able to do before. So she sat, rebellious, on the front stoop of the sad house every night that summer planning an escape. New York. Paris. Moscow. Boise. Anywhere but San Francisco. Anywhere but Prescott Street.

Some nights Andy would come and sit with her. She would sit alone, wrapped up in her thoughts, and then she would hear the _thump, thump_ sound of Andy's basketball as he came around the corner. Most nights he and some of the other guys from school played basketball at a court a few blocks down. She knew for a fact that Andy didn't dribble the ball the whole way home, and she was always struck wholeheartedly by his comforting gesture of warning. _Thump, thump. _Andy-speak for: _It's okay to hide if you don't want to talk tonight._

They always seemed to say the same things. Like everything else in her life, Andy was a constant. Like everything else in her life, she loved him and hated him for this.

One night in August, he didn't have his ball. There was no cheerful warning and as Andy rounded the corner she knew immediately that he hadn't even been at the court. No sweat, nicer clothes and even from several feet away she could smell cologne on him. "Hot date tonight?"

He stood at the bottom of the stairs looking up at her. "Still smoking?" he asked, though the evidence of her transgression was even more obvious than his. "You're going to incapacitate your lungs when you have to cheer on the football team."

Shrugging, she inhaled another breath of smoke and blew it up, far, far away into the darkening sky. "Maybe I don't want to be a cheerleader anymore."

Andy shoved his hands into his pockets. "Impossible. Everyone wants to be a cheerleader. Hell, I want to be a cheerleader."

"Maybe I won't even go back to school this year." Prue brushed off Andy's humor like a fly; she didn't have the heart for laughter that night.

"Going to join the circus?"

"Sure. Anything to get the hell out of here."

"Acrobat or clown?"

"Andy." His name came out as a sigh and she smashed her cigarette against the pavement. An invitation. Andy came up and sat next to her; their knees bumped together.

"Okay. I'll bite. What's wrong?"

She wasn't ready yet, so she began in the opposite corner. The fastest way to get somewhere was in a straight line. "Do you think my mom ever came out here and sat on these steps and thought about just getting away from here?"

"Anything's possible."

"She was only twenty when I was born, Andy. Sometimes I sit out here and think about her coming here too. Sitting on these same steps and wondering if she threw her whole life away."

Andy leaned back on the hard concrete and looked up at the stars. "Your mom loved you, Prue. I remember the way she was with you."

Prue loved him for not disagreeing with her. He knew a part of her that no one else ever could or would and that was why he was her best friend. He was the only one who, on rare occasions, was allowed to see her vulnerability.

She took a deep breath and tried unsuccessfully to form a smile. "I had a fight with Grams tonight."

"About?"

"College. She wants me to stay here. And by here I mean right on this street. She doesn't even want me to live away from home."

"Why not?"

"God only knows! Probably to keep playing mother to Piper and Phoebe. I'm so fucking sick of it, Andy. If I don't get away from here…If I don't get my own life soon…"

Andy glanced at her. "You have a life, Prue. You have friends. You're wild about your sisters, even if you don't want to admit it right now. And you're going to be a photographer, just like you've always wanted to be. It doesn't matter if it happens here or two thousand miles away."

Prue pressed her forehead into her palms, grinding her elbows into her thighs. "I just want to be my age for once. When I turn seventeen in October I want to have a big party and do something stupid and just spend one night not worrying about _everything_! I didn't sign on to be a mother! God, I just want to be a teenager for _one second_!"

"Prue…"

"Andy, I just…sometimes I just _hate_ her!"

She felt Andy's hand rub against the base of her neck, clearly trying to sooth her anger. Mostly, though, his hand tangled in her long hair, tugging uncomfortably. She leaned forward, away from his touch.

"I shouldn't have said that. I don't mean that."

"I know, Prue. She's your grandmother. Of course you don't hate her."

Prue nodded, glad that Andy hadn't heard the subtlety in her statement. At that moment, she hadn't been mad at her grandmother. The anger in her words had been directed at her mother, a momentary escape of the smoldering fury that had been growing inside of her for months—years?—now. It was one thing Andy didn't know. One thing he could never know. Anything he would say to her would only sooth the guilt she felt every day and she couldn't loose that guilt. Without it, she feared she would lose the love that remained for her mother.

"Look, Prue, I think you should come camping with us this weekend. Joey's coming and he's bringing his girlfriend and a couple other people. You should come too. It'll get your mind off things. Get you away from here for a few days."

Lifting her head, Prue smiled for the first time that night. Andy couldn't make everything better; no one could. But as usual, he had the perfect temporary solution. "Yeah. Okay. I mean, I'll have to ask Grams."

Andy tousled her hair and Prue slapped his leg in retaliation. The fog of melancholy that had haunted her most of the summer lifted and she breathed strongly and clearly for a moment. And for an hour in August of 1987, there was life at the house on the corner of Prescott Street again.


	2. Cry in Shades of Gray

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Charmed_.

**Cry in Shades of Gray**

Her world began in March of 1978 under the dining room table.

She remembered things from before then; fleeting moments of glee or embarrassment or grief. But her life as it might have been ended that dreary March and reminiscing would never bring the possibilities back. Nine years later, as summer approached, Prue felt for the first time the suffocating burden she'd unwittingly placed on herself the moment she crawled under the table.

The day they buried her mother, the world was gray and flat. Prue sat staring out of the car window up at a sky that stretched out infinitely, a solid sheet of dull-colored rock. This was one of the few things she remembered about that day. The actual funeral, the drive back to their house, the mourners and condolences and sympathetic looks: all of this faded into the background of her mind. She imagined it time and again, but would be hard-pressed to recall the actual details. The dining room table, however, stayed with her a lifetime.

Prue knew that the adults must have fawned over Phoebe, only two at the time, but at some point her youngest sister ended up in her arms. Really, Phoebe had been too big for seven-year-old Prue to carry, but in some surge of strength, in some unwillingness to give her sister back to the arms of strangers, Prue wrapped Phoebe's legs around her waist and carried her like a mother monkey would her baby at the zoo. Piper, who spent the day meandering between Prue and Grams, stood by her side then and looked at her with doleful eyes. _No more_, they said. Phoebe's tired head against her shoulder. _No more_.

She led them to the dining room table. Someone had laid a slat-gray tablecloth across the top, creating the perfect cover. Wordlessly, Piper crawled under, followed by Prue and Phoebe. Prue didn't know how long they sat there, Phoebe sleeping in her lap, Piper snuggling into her side. All she did know was that by the time Grams lifted the tablecloth and said, _Let's get out of here, girls_, a strain of possessiveness over her sisters had coursed through her. They were hers to protect; hers to comfort; hers to love. No one, ever, would take that away.

She'd been cursed—_blessed_?—ever since. On the way to the beach after Grams found them under the table. As Piper refused to leave the house and go to first grade. When their father left and never came back. The day Phoebe asked, _Why don't we have a mother?_ Every single day for nine years she'd been the shoulder they cried on and the wall they stood behind. She was exhausted.

That was why, she supposed, that she began to collect the pamphlets.

When she was fourteen she went to her first college fair. She and Andy had tagged along with his older brother and spent most of the fair collecting brochures from schools as far away from San Francisco as they could. They'd laughed about it then, thinking of Kansas City or Scranton or Ann Arbor and trying to picture themselves there. At home that night, though, Prue had gingerly set them into an old cigar box she'd gotten long ago in a time she couldn't remember well. Then the box went under her bed, out of view from the rest of the world.

In two years she'd collected grand amount of college paraphernalia. Some days she'd lock herself in her room and lay it across her floor to examine all the possibilities life held. She let herself forget that her life had been created for her years ago and that there was no escape. And it was nice to escape into fantasy for awhile. To unremember the day under the dining room table and the promises it held.

When the real world inevitably crept back in, she would sweep the evidence back into hiding and remind herself that she was merely pretending. She'd laugh like she and Andy had two years ago and pretend it was a joke. She told herself that it meant nothing—that it had to mean nothing.

And sometimes at night she whispered the same thing as she cried herself to sleep, tears seeping into her white pillow and creating spots of gray.


	3. Red Balloons Ain't Worth a Dime

**Disclaimer: **I do not own _Charmed_.

**A/n: **The title of this chapter is an allusion to one of my favorite poems, "Tragedy" by Jill Sparger. I hope you all enjoy.

**Red Balloons Ain't Worth a Dime**

The beginning of the school year felt like a slow seduction.

School started and she slinked into school in a tight red sweater with crimson lipstick painted on while she sported a half-smile she thought was mysterious. She adopted a nonchalance that translated into everything she did: cheerleading, student council, classwork. For the first time she attracted boys who had never spared her a glance before.

Of course it was all a warm-up.

Prue didn't care about the guys whose eyes roamed her body. She shrugged when they asked her out and for the first time ever, skipped the homecoming dance. This was a new Prue. A better Prue. This Prue was unreachable.

Andy continued to speak to her like nothing had changed. Sometimes he rolled his eyes or said things to deliberately provoke her and once he outwardly asked, "What the hell is up with you lately?" None of this cracked the new veneer she had so carefully crafted; older, worldlier, sexier.

Jessica and Natalie, juniors on the cheerleading squad, become her new best friends and every weekend they went out to the local colleges and infiltrated the frats. Amidst a haze of smoke, through the penetrating bass of loud music, covered in the stench of sweat and cheap beer, Prue spent her weekends pressed up against various college guys. Eventually, she started to sneak away into dark corners lit only by smoky red light and let those guys stick their tongues down her throat, fondle her breasts and slowly inch their hands up her skirt. She felt dirty and she reveled in it.

On her seventeenth birthday, Grams baked a chocolate cake with pink frosting and her family sang happy birthday to her while she resisted the urge to roll her eyes. That night she snuck out of the house and Jessica picked her up; they drove for over an hour before Jessica finally stopped at a shady looking bar and declared she had to pee. Prue followed her inside and for just a moment, some little girl part of her still locked inside rose up and yelled at her to run far, far away.

"I'll be right back," Jessica said, and Prue watched as she sashayed across the room, various heads turning to follow her swinging hips.

Prue took a seat at a table near the door and surveyed the room. Dark cherry wood everywhere and a rickety old pool table. Around her men in dark clothes with tattoos and dirty hair drank heavily; the room was so silent that Prue nearly suffocated. She passed the minutes that Jessica was gone by counting the beams in the low hung ceiling.

After what seemed to be an eternity, Jessica returned with three guys in tow. They were younger than most of the patrons, but still at least ten years older than Prue. Still, there was something about the dark hooded eyes of the tallest that made Prue's stomach fall to her feet. She knew, then, what the night would hold and she pushed away the niggling feelings of panic that the little girl inside of her struggled to make prominent.

"Prue, this is Hank, Moses and Luke. Guys, this is my friend Prue. It's her birthday."

"Birthday girl, huh?" said Moses. "How old?"

"Eighteen," Jessica supplied automatically, though her eyes were sweeping Hank from head to foot. Moses raised an eyebrow, skeptically, and offered to go get rounds for the group. Luke, however, swung a chair around and sank down on it, sitting close enough to Prue that she felt his breath on her face.

"All grown up now," he said.

Prue nodded, dumbly, but tried to pass it off as suave. She tossed her hair over her shoulder and resisted the urge to adjust her bra strap. Luke reached out and ran a thumb over her cheekbone. "Birthday girls always get a kiss." Before she could say yes or no, he leaned forward and kissed her; inside her too-high scarlet heels, her toes curled.

It didn't take long after Moses brought the first round that Prue felt tipsy. All three guys were more than liberal with the beer and the warmth of the alcohol surged through her, igniting every limb in her body in a warm glow. Soon Luke had his hand so far up her skirt that his thumb traced the edge of her new lace panties. Her breath became ragged and her eyes glassy; this, she thought dumbly, was lust beyond anything she'd experienced before.

At some point, Jessica wondered off with Hank and Moses disappeared and she was left alone with Luke at the table. He began to kiss her neck, his hand slowly working its way up the inside of her shirt and she wanted to go further so, so badly that her hands were shaking. But she couldn't. Not in a smelly bar with men old enough to be her father watching not so discreetly.

"I need to find Jessica," she whispered.

"She left. She and Hank went to find a motel, remember?"

She honestly couldn't, and for a moment panic flamed through her brilliantly. How would she get home?

"We should move this somewhere more private," Luke continued, oblivious to her newfound need for escape.

"Not tonight," said Prue, pulling away, scraping her chair against the hardwood floor.

"Come on, birthday girl. Don't worry."

"I need to get home. I…I need to go."

Luke finally snapped from his haze a little and he raised an eyebrow at her. "Fine," he said, anger lacing the word. "Go home then." He stood.

"Wait," said Prue, catching his hand. He looked down at her with disdain. "It's not that I don't want to. But I can't tonight."

"I'm not interested in dating you."

For a moment a flash of herself in a poofy red prom dress, her arm linked through Luke's sprung into her mind, creating an image so hilarious she nearly laughed. She had no desire to date Luke either.

Something in her expression seemed to have caught his attention. He sighed and jerked his head. "Come on. I'll take you home."

The ride back to her house was long and the whole time Luke kept a possessive hand on her thigh, rubbing circles that made her brain feel incapable of thought. When they pulled up in front of her home, Luke tugged on her arm and rolled up her sleeve. From nowhere he produced a pen; in blood red ink he scrawled his phone number across her forearm.

"When you are ready," he said. Then he grabbed the back of her head, fingers laced through her hair, and tugged her into a heady, deep kiss.


End file.
